Nepal is planning to slash climbing fees for Mount Everest in the off-season to try to ease congestion and attract more mountaineers in the quiet autumn and winter months.

The move is also designed to lure climbers away from China, which charges far less to climb the world’s highest peak from the Tibetan side and has plans to build a paved road to Base Camp.

There were warnings, however, that the cut would mean more deaths as less-experienced climbers were attracted by the lower prices in worse weather conditions.

K.N. Dhakal, the Under-Secretary for the Ministry of Tourism, said a committee would discuss the price cut as part of a “Nepal for all seasons” promotional campaign this year.

“The main motive is to attract more tourists,” he told The Times from Kathmandu, the Nepalese capital.

“We’re hoping that some mountaineers will take up the challenge of climbing Everest in the off-season, when there’s snow as well as ice.”

The Nepalese Government currently charges $25,000 (about £12,500) for one person to climb Everest via the southeastern route that was first navigated successfully by Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay in 1953.

Other routes from the Nepalese side typically cost about $50,000 for a group of up to seven climbers.

Neither fee includes food, guides, transport, oxygen, radios and other equipment and services, which can cost several thousand pounds more per head.

Most expeditions climb the mountain in the high season between March and May, when the weather is best, resulting in increasingly severe congestion on the 8,848m summit. About 1,500 people tackled Everest this year, of whom 600 reached the peak.

Mr Dhakal said the plan was to cut the fee by 50 per cent during the autumn season, from September to November, and by 75 per cent during the winter season, from December to February.

The high-season fees would probably remain the same, he said, but the committee would make a final decision within the next month.

The proposal appeared to go down well with climbers, guides and mountaineering agencies, who have been lobbying for a price cut ever since an uprising by Maoist rebels hit tourist numbers a decade ago.

Tourism is one of the pillars of the Nepalesae economy, accounting for about 4 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product. But the number of visitors fell to about 280,000 last year from nearly half a million in 1999, due largely to the Maoist conflict, which killed more than 13,000 people.

The Government signed a peace deal with the Maoists last year and aims to attract 600,000 visitors in the current fiscal year, but regular strikes, protests and inter-ethnic clashes continue to deter tourists.

Deepak Mahat, managing director of Third Pole Treks, said: “During high season, we’ve had 100 to 150 people summiting at the same time – that’s too much for Everest. If they cut the royalties for the off-season, there will be some groups that are interested.”

A former head of Nepal’s Trekking Agencies Association, he added that the Government needed to do more to compete with China, which charges $5,000 per head to climb Everest from the Tibetan side.

However, he warned prospective off-season climbers that conditions on the mountain become treacherous in winter, with temperatures at Base Camp dropping to about minus 50C (minus 58F).

“It will be very dangerous,” he said. “I can’t believe big traffic will come in the off-season.”

Climbers from a US and Canadian team scaled Everest last autumn, but the last successful winter climb from the Nepalese side was carried out by a Japanese team in 1993. No team has attempted a winter bid since 1999 when a US expedition failed,

Lethal peak

— Unofficial figures show that 15 people died attempting to climb the 29,035 ft (8,850 meters) Mount Everest last year

— One in ten mountain climbers die while trying to scale the peak

— For those who reach the summit there is a one-in-20 chance that they will not survive the return trip to the bottom

— About 120 bodies of the 200 who have died on Everest since 1922 have been abandoned there

Sources: www.mnteverest.net; www.everestnews.com; BMJ

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